Complaint Review: Ebay - Internet

Since 2001, I've had a stellar record account with Ebay which included buying and selling. Same with Paypal. No problems.

As of November however, my daughter moved back home and wanted to have her own Dish receiver in her room. So rather than buy new, I go to Ebay looking. Find several Dish receivers and bid on one and subsequently win it. Item is paid for and shipped. Item arrives in good condition box and begin to set the receiver up and get it activated with Dish Network. No power. No matter what I did, would not power up. Communications subsequently with the seller indicate that maybe I should check the fuse. No user serviceable components on the device but a fuse is internal. Seller authorized me to check fuse and fuse was blown. Replaced fuse and blows again. Not my problem now as box appears to have been defective all this time. Having spent 33 years in the consumer electronics service industry, the box exhibited all the signs of being lightning or surge damaged. Seller refuses to accept box back and ship another one, and refuses to refund money.

Subsequent complaint filed with Paypal and through month-long investigation, Paypal determined that I was due a refund. I ultimately get my money back and have to loose $10 shipping the defective item back to the seller per Paypal's instructions.

Now it gets interesting.

Seller turns around and files a non-paying bidder against me for the very same auction!! I follow up with replies to Ebay's dispute emails about the situation including even sending them the requested information about the transaction and Paypal's investigative outcome.

Going back over these emails, they are all exhibiting the appearance of being generated by a computer and not a human. In none of these responses were any acknowledgment that they have or acted on any of the data they requested of me. When I filed a specific request to Ebay customer service, I get yet another generically formatted email asking me to once again provide the details of the auction. A month of only 2 emails back and forth to Ebay gets me nowhere with them. Even when faced with the paper trail demonstrating this sellers intent on manipulating the system, and Ebay is yet still uninterested. I continued to notice all of the emails from Ebay were all the same format and wording. It's like its a stock message coming from a machine where there is no human interaction what so ever.

Two weeks later, my account is sanctioned with a "Non Paying Bidder" on it. You cannot even get a live person on eBay. The whole thing appears to be a machine.

This issue coupled with prior bids and wins where the sellers were obviously trying to separate me from my bank accounts has caused me to permanently close the account. No response from eBay about the matter at all has told me they are pretty much uninterested in dealing with this matter, or that Ebay as a whole; is entirely a very sophisticated machine that doesn't actually have any or very limited human interaction.

If you are brave enough to use Ebay for anything at all, good luck. It's turning into a haven for the gypsies, thieves and swindlers. If you buy something from an ebay seller and its defective, don't bother using Ebay to get it exchanged, you get your account closed if you do. Just eat it and move on. You've been suckered.

Paypal has been great through this and they have real humans doing the work and saw this for what it was--a non repentant seller unloading junk and wanting to make sure it stays that way. Which is why I don't understand the disconnect between Ebay and Paypal. Same company? I now question this.

I've since bought another replacement Dish receiver for my daughters room from Amazon.com and have it running and in good order.

One last point. In the event that Ebay decides to challenge me on this issue; please be very aware that I retained all emails and documentation from Ebay, Paypal, and the seller and these would stand up in a court of law should you try and do a "cease and desist" attack on me. You come after me to try and squelch me on this issue, I will turn this into a large punitive and consequential award in my favor!! I have heard of this kind of activity happening to others.

I would suggest fixing your problems. Ebay has lost me as a customer.

Jeff k

Columbia Heights, Minnesota

U.S.A.

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